The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 25


Since all of Olivia’s children and grandchildren had plans for Christmas, and both of Peter’s were going to their in-laws, they agreed to be together for Christmas, quietly in Bedford. They had never before spent a holiday together, and they were looking forward to it. And Olivia knew it would take some of the ache out of missing Maribelle. She still felt her mother’s absence every day, and reached for the phone at least once a day to call her, and then remembered she wasn’t there. She knew she would miss her wisdom and her love forever, and her gentle, sunny ways. Hers had been the legacy they would all cherish for their entire lives. She had given so much to so many.

But spending Christmas and New Year with Peter seemed like a good idea to Olivia, and Peter was thrilled. He had spent morbidly depressing holidays for years, trying to compensate for an alcoholic wife. She was already in rehab and supposedly doing well, and the divorce was under way.

Olivia had her Christmas shopping finished early, as she always did, for each of them. She was planning to have dinner with all of her children before they left for Vermont, and Phillip for the Caribbean, to give them their gifts, and now that Peter was free, she was planning to invite him. She had everything organized.

And in the first week of December, she had her annual mammogram. She always dreaded it, and feared that at her age, lightning could strike at any time. The Russian roulette of life. Her assistant Margaret reminded her of it the day before, and Olivia told herself the morning she went that she had nothing to worry about. Maribelle had never had any problems of the sort—why should she?

She recognized the technician from previous years, and everything went smoothly. It was never pleasant, but it wasn’t agonizing, and she was reminding herself of how foolish she was to worry about it every year, as she got dressed and the technician came back in the room.

“Could you come into the office for a few minutes, Mrs. Grayson?” she asked, still holding Olivia’s chart with films from previous years. She went diligently every year.

“Something wrong?” Olivia felt a chill run down her spine.

The woman didn’t say yes or no. She just smiled brightly, and said that the doctor wanted to see her for a minute. Olivia’s blood ran cold at the words. This was too much. First she lost her mother, now her health was going to start falling apart. And Maribelle had been in good health for her entire life. Olivia wanted to believe that that was some kind of safe passage for her, but suddenly she wasn’t sure.

She walked into the doctor’s office, fully dressed as though her clothes were a form of armor to protect her, but she felt vulnerable and scared. He had several films in a light box up on the wall, which showed her left breast frontally and in profile. It just looked like a mass of gray to her. He pointed to a spot she couldn’t see at first, a little darker than the rest.

“I’m not liking this spot a lot,” he said with a frown. “It could be the beginnings of a small mass. I’d like to do a biopsy.”

“Now?” She looked horrified and felt like she wanted to run out of the room, but her legs had turned to Jell-O and she wanted to scream, while pretending to be perfectly calm. But she was anything but calm. She was panicked.

“You could come back tomorrow if you like. But I think we should do it right away.”

“Do you think it’s cancer?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

“It could be a small malignancy.” He confirmed her worst fears. Olivia knew that one in eight women got breast cancer, and she was suddenly petrified. What if she was that one?

“And if it is?”

“That will depend on what we find. Often with something very early, we can handle it with a lumpectomy and no further treatment. If it’s at a more advanced stage we can talk about chemo and radiation, or hormone therapy. You have no family history of breast cancer from what I see, so hopefully this is very early and a lumpectomy would do it.”

“You’re sure it’s cancer?” For a woman who ran an empire, she suddenly felt helpless and small.

“No. That’s why we want the biopsy,” he said firmly. “Does tomorrow work for you?” No, never works for me, she wanted to say, but she knew she had to be responsible, and she was suddenly terrified of facing this alone. She didn’t want to frighten her children, and she thought of calling Peter, but she had just turned down his proposal, she had no right to burden him with the threat of cancer if she didn’t want to be his wife. This wasn’t his problem, it was hers. She nodded at the time the doctor suggested, and left the room in a daze. The technician was waiting for her outside with her sunny smile.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. Easy for her to say, Olivia thought, it wasn’t her breast. She explained that they would make a small incision under local anesthetic, take out a small section, analyze it, and if necessary, after the results, operate to remove the lump. And she’d be fine. Easy peasy, scary as shit, she thought.

Olivia went back to her office, feeling as though she’d been hit by a bus. Margaret looked at her when she walked in and thought Olivia looked a little gray.

“Everything go all right?” she asked her.

“Perfect.” Olivia smiled a wide, fraudulent smile. She had decided on the way back to the office that she would tell no one, and if she had to have a lumpectomy, she would do it alone. Her children didn’t need a cancer scare after just losing their grandmother. It would be too much for them, she decided, which meant she had to face it alone. She refused to tell Peter, and take advantage of a man she loved but didn’t want to marry.

She spent a terrible night, wide awake, waiting to go in for the biopsy, and it was not quite as “piece of cake” as the technician had promised. It was terrifying and painful, the anesthetic didn’t work perfectly, and the incision was bigger than she thought. They told her they wanted to get a good sample so they didn’t miss anything. And afterward her breast hurt terribly. She had planned to go to the office, but went home instead, and told her assistant she had stomach flu. She stayed in bed for the rest of the day and felt lousy, and when Peter called and said he wanted to come over that night, she told him she had stomach flu and didn’t want to give it to him. She had never felt so alone in her life. Liz called her, and she listened to all her excitement about Andrew and her book. Olivia felt as though she were hearing her from another planet. She felt distant from everyone and very, very frightened. For the first time, she was aware of her own mortality. Her mother’s death had brought that home to her. And what if she had cancer now? What if she died? Her children would be devastated, but she knew she had to die someday, just not yet. She suddenly wondered if she had made the right decision about Peter, which seemed pathetic. She didn’t want to be with him out of fear or need. She felt weak and small and scared. She almost called him and asked him to be with her, but she didn’t. She forced herself to be brave. They had told her they would call her with the results of the biopsy in five to seven days.

Olivia was back in the office the day after the biopsy, and it was the longest week of her life. She told Peter she was still sick over the weekend and avoided him, and she spent the days alone, in terror. It was the following Tuesday when the doctor called. He announced it was “good news,” which sounded debatable to Olivia. It was an early-stage cancer, and if no lymph nodes were involved, and it was contained with clean margins, he was sure that they could get it with a small incision, and get by with a lumpectomy, which he suggested doing as soon as possible. And they would have the results from it in a week, to determine if she needed chemo or radiation, or possibly get by without it. It all sounded like bad news to her. Merry Christmas.

She agreed to do the surgery on Friday, so she could recover from the procedure over the weekend. And she was seeing the children for their early Christmas dinner a week from Monday, so she had to be in decent shape. The doctor said she would be fine by then, with ten days to recover.

To make matters worse, Peter wandered into her office and told her he was hoping to spend the weekend with her. He looked elated when he said it. He was so happy about his new freedom, and what it meant to them. He could be with her as often as they wanted.

“I can’t. I have to work,” she said tersely, not looking up from her desk. She was afraid to look into his eyes, for fear that he would see the terror there. When she finally did look up, she saw that he looked hurt.

“Are you angry at me?” he asked gently.

“No, of course not,” she said, forcing herself to smile at him. “I’m sorry. I was distracted. I just haven’t been feeling well. This silly stomach bug I picked up, and now I have a mountain of work to do this weekend. End-of-year sales reports to go over.”

“Are you sure?” She could see that he didn’t believe her and he was right.

“Positive. I promise, we’ll play next weekend. I’m sorry to be such a bore.” This would be the second weekend she’d be avoiding him. He didn’t look suspicious, he looked hurt.

“I could come out and read while you work,” he suggested with a hopeful look.

“I’d feel too guilty,” she said, feeling like a monster. She didn’t want him to see her hurting, or know that she had cancer, even if it was “only” stage one. It was her own dirty little secret. And she didn’t want him to see her weak. She wanted him to see her strong, the epitome of the independent woman she thought she was, until the biopsy. He left her office looking sad.

The days until the surgery seemed endless, the night before a nightmare. Peter called and she didn’t pick up her phone. She didn’t trust herself not to beg him to come over and go to the hospital with her for the surgery.

She was at the hospital at six A.M. as they had told her. They ran tests, put in an IV, and at seven-thirty she was being rolled into surgery, with a feeling of total panic. She had never been so terrified in her life. And minutes later she was unconscious.

She woke up in the recovery room, feeling sick to her stomach. She was woozy, and by the time they wheeled her to a room, the pain in her breast was excruciating. They gave her a shot for the pain and the surgeon came in and told her how well it had gone. It had been very small, well contained, and if her lymph nodes proved to be clear in the pathology report, there would be no need for further treatment. All she had to do was get checked every six months to make sure it hadn’t returned. Mammograms would be sufficient.

And then he told her she wouldn’t be able to use her left arm for the next two weeks while it was healing. He had forgotten to mention that before, but fortunately she was right-handed. She stayed in bed at the hospital all day, dizzy from the pain and the medication, and at six o’clock they discharged her. She had arranged for a car and driver to take her back to Bedford. The house was empty when she got home.

And Peter called almost the minute she got in. She had to sit down in a chair she was so dizzy, and she realized she was foolish to be alone in the house. She planned to go straight to bed without dinner. She wasn’t hungry. She felt sick from the pain meds, her breast was aching miserably, and she had a headache.

“Where were you all day?” he asked, sounding anxious. “I’ve been calling you and you didn’t return my calls. Margaret said you didn’t come in.”

“It’s that stupid stomach flu again, I’m feeling rotten.” She sounded it.

“Ohmigod, you sound awful. I’ll come over and take care of you.”

“No, don’t. You’ll catch it. It’s miserable.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’ve been avoiding me all week?” It had actually been almost two weeks since they found the shadow on her mammogram, and she had been avoiding him since then.

“Because you’re paranoid, and I love you.”

“I love you too. I want to see you.” He sounded worried and insistent, and she wasn’t up to reassuring him.

“I promise, I’ll be fine in a few days. And you’re coming to dinner with the children a week from Monday.”

“I’m not waiting to see you till then.” He sounded horrified at the thought, but the truth was she wanted to give the breast time to heal, and have the pathology report before she spent time with him. “I’ll stay over this week if you want,” he offered. She didn’t have the courage to tell him he couldn’t. Then he would know something was seriously wrong, but she would still have the bandages on, on Monday, and even the following week. She’d have to tell him something. And the doctor said her breast would be tender for several weeks after that, and there would be a small indentation where they had removed the lump. Sooner or later she’d have to explain it to Peter, even if she said it was benign. But not yet. Not when she felt so sick and hurt so much, and felt so small. This wasn’t the side of her she wanted him or anyone to see. The frail, human side. She was used to showing the world her strength, not her weakness. “Let me know if you want me to come by over the weekend,” he said hopefully when they hung up, and she practically crawled into bed, took another pain pill, and passed out.

It was a long, lonely weekend. She did a lot of soul searching as she lay there hurting. She had done everything she wanted to with her life. She had created a successful business to leave to her children. She had provided security for them. She had lived to see her grandchildren, and she would see Cass’s baby born in June. She had brought up her own children as best she could. She had loved two wonderful men. But suddenly as she examined all of it, it didn’t seem like enough. She hadn’t taken time to play, to relax and have fun. She had been so busy working that it had taken precedence over all else for most of her adult life, if not all of it. The only time she took off was two weeks every summer for her children. She realized that she wanted to slow down a little now, not a lot, but enough to enjoy herself, and spend time with Peter. He meant more to her than she had admitted to herself. And she didn’t have to marry him, but they could be with each other more. She didn’t want to die alone in an empty, silent house. She realized that over the weekend, as she listened to the silence. She had never felt lonelier in her life.

She called all of her children over the weekend, and finally Peter. She felt a little better, but not enough. It had been depressing, but a revelation of sorts too. She had realized she wasn’t going to live forever. She didn’t have another hundred years to play with. She would have whatever she got, and she wanted to make it good, better than she had been, more fun, and gentler, and bask in the love of the good man who loved her.

“I miss you,” she said to him when she called him. This time she was the first to say it.

“I miss you too. I’ve been lonely for you all weekend.” It was good to hear.

“So have I.”

“Are you feeling better?” He sounded concerned. He had been for days.

“A little,” she said honestly. Her breast didn’t hurt quite as much, but it had been a jolt to her system. And she realized she would have to tell him something at least, she hadn’t figured out what yet. The truth, or only some of it. She hadn’t decided. She wanted to tell him about the epiphany she’d had too, but not until she was feeling better. She had managed to get through this alone, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that again, or why she had to. She had realized that it was okay to share her burden with someone else, particularly if he loved her. She would have done it for him.

She thought of him that night, and wished he had been there for the weekend, near her, while she slept. She wished she had allowed it, or felt that she could. There was always a voice in her, telling her to be strong, and she had been. But suddenly she wondered if it was so important to always be strong, to never let her guard down, to run the empire with an iron hand. For the first time in her life, all she wanted was to be a woman. It was enough.